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Suppressed Report Shows Pirates Are Good Customers
An anonymous reader writes "The movie and music industry think pirates are criminals and parasites who cost both industries billions of dollars in lost sales. In order to prove this fact a number of studies have been commissioned to help demonstrate the effect a pirate has on sales of entertainment. GfK Group is one of the largest market research companies in the world and is often used by the movie industry to carry out research and studies into piracy. Talking to a source within GfK who wished to remain anonymous, Telepolis found that a recent study looking at pirates and their purchasing activities found them to be almost the complete opposite of the criminal parasites the entertainment industry want them to be. The study states that it is much more typical for a pirate to download an illegal copy of a movie to try it before purchasing. They are also found to purchase more DVDs than the average consumer, and they visit the movie theater more, especially for opening weekend releases which typically cost more to attend."
The MPAA/RIAA lying about stats to justify unjust laws? Never.
They also lie on surveys about pirating and purchasing.
When you can't deny the information any longer, you switch to discrediting it. Fighting truth is just a cost of business for the entertainment industry.
I often download the first season of TV shows, and then buy the blu-ray of the rest - which I have to ship from a different continent because they won't sell them in my country. Well, they often don't air the TV shows here (in any channel), and of course web access is country restricted.
So I go out of my way to pay. If you still think I'm a pirate, fuck off.
It's not about reality, it's about using the legal system as a tool to extort even more money out of them than they're already spending. Money left over for a car payment? How dare you!
I guess it depends on which part of the piracy chain they are speaking too. Are they talking to the people who buy/borrow DVD/Blurays to rip and distribute them? The people that go to the latest release movies to video tape them? Sure, they are "good customers". Or are they talking to the people that download them from the forementioned "pirates" because they're sick of going to the movies to see something that costs a fortune, in an uncomfortable chair with no surround sound, half the picture off the screen and some annoying little shit kicking the back of their seat? Or perhaps they're talking about the kind of people that download them because they can't afford to buy the DVD, and rather than recording it off the TV they get a version off the net that is only different from the TV version because it doesn't have ads in it, though if they got the cable version it wouldn't have ads in it, so in reality there is actually no difference.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Did they correct for the amount of media consumed for each person? Of course someone who pirates 50% of all media they consume, yet consumes a large amount of media is going to purchase more than someone who consumes far less.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
People who torrent lots of media tend to enjoy being consumers of media. Many want to support artists but love the convenience P2P gives them, so they utilize it to try products and then support the artists they think deserve funds by purchasing DVDs/CDs/Games, or they simply want a physical copy as a result of wanting to collect things.
I'm not discounting that some pirates are purely leeches however. There's no reason to believe that all pirates are so generous, just that it makes pretty good sense that a majority are willing to pay for quality entertainment. Hell, I've purchased each volume of MegaTokyo religiously since picking up the first one randomly in a bookstore, regardless of the fact that the comics are all available for free online (And not illegally either).
I download a ton of stuff (the full-evaluation copy, my friend called it), but if I like it, I buy the CD. I'm pushing 4,000 right now, and I can't imagine I'd have a fifth that if I had to buy before listening. Digital distribution's made it so easy to try 20 different bands in one listening session, so expecting people to just shell out money in the faith that the product will be to their liking seems so... antiquated.
Haida Manga
I can has teh what you smoking?
No, and yes.
They aren't the idiots that they play themselves to be, that are blindly trying to sue everyone and don't understand how things should work. They are completely aware of the situation, and understand that they are playing the game in the most profitable way possible, and have absolutely no reason to change their ways.
But yes they do recognize pirates (and customers, and little green men, and everyone else on and off the planet) as a threat to their bottom line, and will take any action they can find that will further to maximize their profit. Be it legal or illegal, moral or immoral, sensible or nonsense. They'll run the numbers and follow the compass to the $outh, past whatever it leads them through.
Can't blame them really. They're experts at their job, and I'm sure their shareholders would agree, they're doing quite well at their job. (otherwise they'd have been fired long ago)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'd say 80% of the CDs I've bought were purchased after listening to several tracks on YouTube, and I'd never have known about the artists without that exposure. I own a ton of video games and the majority of them were purchases made after rental or borrowing from friends.
I don't agree with piracy, but I definitely think that sampling something leads to more purchases being made. This study makes perfect sense and should never have been suppressed.
We know from other data that music sales (http://www.businessinsider.com/these-charts-explain-the-real-death-of-the-music-industry-2011-2) and DVD/BlueRay sales (*see below) are down. When adjusted for inflation and population growth, Box office revenues are down around 15% compared to 10 years ago.
It's also worth pointing out that saying, "pirates buy more than the average consumer" is not actually an argument for piracy, since pirates tend to be disproportionately from a class of people who were originally big fans. Thus, it's possible that "big fans" who start using piracy end up buying 1/2 as much as they used to, but still out-buy the "average consumer" who was never all that interested. (For example, I don't pirate and I own zero DVDs or BluRay disks, which makes it easy for pirates to buy more than me.)
* "Total revenue from DVD, Blu-ray and digital sales and rentals of movies and television shows in the U.S. declined 3% to $18.8 billion in 2010, according to new data from industry trade organization Digital Entertainment Group. Although the drops, particularly of DVD sales, are worrisome for the entertainment industry, studio executives can at least take some comfort in the fact that the picture isn't worsening as quickly as it did in 2009, when total home entertainment revenue plunged 7.6%."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/01/home-entertainment-market-shrinking-slower-as-blu-ray-and-digital-make-up-for-more-of-dvd-decline.html
Spending lots of money doesn't justify a criminal act.
Its like saying 'its OK for me to steal a car because I spend lots of money on petrol'.
I appreciate that the analogy is not perfect as the petrol companies don't sell cars, but there are a lot of different companies in the media industry too.
Piracy probably puts a netable, measurable ding in "possible" sales and rentals of Hollywood's latest made-in-a-minute huge budget Romantic Comedies, Buddy Cop flicks and other such garbage. I'm also guessing that, much like Microsoft and their problem with overcharging chinese people for copies of Windows, they are mad at people in less economically solvent countries pirating their movies as well. People who like content will pay what they can when they can. If they really love something they will have it in their heart to support it if they can.
A while back I came across a copy of Modern Recording magazine (this was a trade magazine aimed at people who worked in recording studios) from 1981 and there was an article about "piracy" of music. In those days there were no personal computers or internet. The villain, according to the record companies, was the cassette tape recorder. People were borrowing albums from their friends and making a copy on cassette tape. So the RIAA commissioned a study that they hoped to take to the government and get some sort of law passed to halt this terrible crime (much like the MPAA tried to stop the VCR).
According ot the article, the RIAA study was shelved and never widely distributed because it revealed -- surprise -- that people who owned cassette tape decks bought an average of 75% more albums that people who didn't own any recording equipment.
I torrent and use Netflix. Both are reasonably priced.
That the people that pirates are usually the people that consider viewing the media their hobby. I.E gamers, movie fans and music fans and not the average Joe. That would make sense to me.
... veing a good customer doesn't put a person above the law.
I never went to concerts or bought records until I started pirating music. I never bought textbooks for pleasure reading until I pirated textbooks. I never bought art creation programs, before pirating them all and finding the ones that suited me. I also never went sailing before I started pirating, but I don't think there is a correlation there. I wouldn't have to pirate if there was some sane trial and advertising didn't lie. As is, pirating is the only thing that allows me to make an informed use of my very limited financial resources. A disproportionate amount of which goes to the people I "stole" from.
I pirated Wing Commander I. I ended up buying WC2-5, Privateer 1 and even Privateer: The Darkening (not a good game). For me, piracy made me a customer of the Wing Commander games.
And let's not talk about Civilization. I've should have never pirated that game, so many sleepless nights because I just had to play "one more turn." I just bought Civ 5 and haven't even loaded up the game.
Lets see...
A person, who cannot be named, says there is a study, that no one has seen, that claims very detailed knowledge about the behavior of people who steal movies....
I find myself asking how one could do a study to verify this claim (from an unknown person about an unseen report). One would have to be able to:
1) Identify a person who has stolen a movie (not just who, but when)
2) Identify a person who has purchased a movie (who and when)
3) Identify a person who has gone to a movie (who and maybe when)
And then be able to correlate these disseperate by the person's identity in order to make these claims.
I know that when I buy tickets for a movie, I do not have to provide identification, so I am unsure how one even gathers the identity information for #3. Maybe if I pay with a credit card (which I do not always do) and no one else has my name (which I know is not true). Even if I did pay for movie tickets with a credit card, I would be surprised if my purchasing behavior on my credit card is available to someone else (would seem to violate some basic privacy terms on my credit card information).
Same issues apply to #2, how do they get the information about how is purchasing movies and when?
And if they can get the information for #1 for a large number of people (again, color me skeptical) why isn't are the RIAA people not suing even more people?
So it seems like I cannot imagine how someone could do a study to get this information, and without this information I do not see how one could draw the conclusions that this anonymous person claims are in this unseen report...
Consumers don't want to be suckered into buying a lemon. MAFIAA much rather that they do.
This should be evident when film industry sued to suppress negative film reviews on opening weekend, knowing that the suit will never hold water. They just wanted the negative reviews off line long enough to sucker a few more people into paying 12 bucks a head to waste a few hours of their lives in a theater.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
a lot of the money mpaa and software companies earn, with a lesser extent riaa is through 'gotcha' marketing. hyping a product, advertising it, paying for glowing reviews of it. to simply trick the consumer into buying it or going to see it. You see, when you buy a software package at many retail stores(not websites) or if you go to see a movie at a theater. part of the cost of your ticket or the product goes to the film producer or software publisher. BUT if you demand a refund of your ticket, or return the product the money you get back is not the same you gave them. that money has already gone to said people, your refund money comes out of the profits of the theater or the big box store. This is why those places put so many restrictions in place for doing such things.
the movie producer companies or the software publishers don't care though, they already got your money wither you demand a refund for a horrible movie exp or horrible piece of software. A customer who pirates is not effected by such underhanded but legal tactics, they have seen that hyped turd of a movie before word of mouth tells people to stay away despite the glowing paid movie reviews and commercials with cherry picked quotes. They might even go as far as to help others from being gypped. Similar with software in general and games specifically.
I admit I'm a pirate.. Less so these days cause I'm too busy but I am still one. I also go to the movies more than my entire family put together. Maybe it has to do more with people who are into tech tend to be pirates more than "normal" people and tech people tend to go to the movies and buy music more? Course I could just be seeing patterns where there are none.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Yes, the argument that pirates buy a lot as well as downloading makes them 'good' customers is inherently flawed.
If we presume good customer to mean one who spends the most possible, then we have to ask this question: Are pirates buying more than they would have, or less? The kneejerk reaction the studios have is 'they are buying less than they would have, as they would have bought the items they are pirating' - the response from the other camp is 'more, because the pirates are trying new stuff they then go on to buy, they become bigger consumers and so buy more, etc...'.
The reality is the study doesn't tell us either of these things, it just tells us that pirates, on average, consume more media than other people, which makes sense, as people don't just start pirating for no reason.
I would weigh in on the side of piracy being a good thing for the industry in the end. The main groups of pirates are young people with little money availible, pirating because otherwise they wouldn't get the product - here the industry isn't loosing sales, but is generating future customers, and creating more buzz and knowledge about the products and consumers who want to try before they buy, who would often not buy products, but due to piracy get the chance to try a product and enjoy it, encouraging them to buy it.
The industry won't like this because it encourages good media and punishes bad media - the industry likes being able to create a marketing buzz and still rake in money on poor products.
I'm not saying that there won't be some loss of sales due to piracy, but I think the reality is it'll generate more in consumer interest and purchases in the end, if done right. The reality is people are now not buying due to horrible DRM, poor methods of getting the product to the consumer. How many people who used to pirate games just hop on with Good Old Games and Steam? How many people who used to pirate songs now subscribe to spotify? How many of those people then go on to buy new games in the franchise, to purchase albums and go to gigs? Piracy works because it's easy and doesn't cost the user. If the industry makes it easier and keeps the price at a good level, consumers will pay hapily, and there will be huge bonuses in marketing and user satisfaction.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
pirate, they are motivated enough to buy. I know I can get tons of free stuff off the internet but I don't care enough to bother. Almost all mainstream music, video, movies, novels, etc, are completely worthless. If I had to spend time trying to find it, I'm literally wasting my time.
I always try to make sure that none of my money goes to the MAFIAA!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Why is it that there are still people trying to tell us who don't steal,those who DO steal are not really that bad. There not pirates they are Internet shoplifters. I mean how brave do you have to be to steal stuff on the Internet? Calling them Pirates is really an insult to the real pirates i would think.
Jack of all trades,master of none
always have been always will be.
i don't spend money on a product that is defective or that i'm not happy with.
if you want people to buy your stuff you should probably make sure it's not terrible.
The MAFIAA are seeing their revenue drop because they are no longer the gate keepers to popular entertainment. Instead of buying CD's of artists signed to members of the RIAA, people can buy songs from tens of thousands of other artists who would never get signed by the big studios. Instead of watching a movie people are watching YouTube videos, chatting via social media, or playing games.
The reason the MAFIAA want to lock down the Internet and PC's isn't to stop piracy, it is to get back their position as gatekeepers of popular entertainment. How can they keep tricking artists into signing contracts that will see the artist get cents on the dollar, if the artist can simply market themselves via the Internet?
It is like Microsoft getting money for every Android device sold. If you can't compete get the government to hand you monopoly rent.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I find this surprising because I know about 20 or so people who regularly pirate videos and they rarely if ever go back and buy the DVD. Why would they when they already have the illegal copy on their media center. What this study says is that most of the people who pirate do not match the profile of the vast majority of people who pirate that I happen to know.
The pirates i know are in the 30 to 50 age range, and make enough money to buy lots of fancy audio video equipment and media centers, but for some reason can't afford to actually buy the movies to watch, Or at least not in the quantity they prefer to consume. So they maintain a media center at work, and whenever one person buy or more commonly rents a movie, they take it to work and rip it, and all the other people take it home on thumb drives to upload to their media servers.
I choose not to partake of this system, because it seems dishonest. Instead, if I can't afford to consume the amount of media that i would like to consume, then I just do without.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Pirate everything. Don't spend money on any of it. Don't make enough. They should take a pay cut if they want me to buy it. Yardi har har motherfuckers!
I get sick of this debate. There are people who yes in fact rob, steal and plunder "warez" , oh sorry thats old school, my bad "Torrenting". But besides that there have been and always will be people who "borrow" from friends and rip/burn/copy movies and music. We did it with the VHS and Cassettes and CD's. Regardless if i download something illegally i can still physically borrow or rent a movie to see if i want it for keeps. If forced to purchase every single thing i have viewed movie wise, it would be a complete waste of my hard earned money period. Sure i have downloaded a lot of movies. But im sorry, a lot of them i wont even finish cause "meh" they aren't all that. Ones that are i do purchase. The only difference i see is that if i borrow from a friend and rip. no one is there to police me or try and track me and send a DCMA notice. So basically this whole torrenting BS is only cause by the fact they can find you now, something they havent been able to do for years (before internet like today) It did not bankrupt the industry then. Should be called "Tor-renting" as i just view (just like a 2$ rental) to see if i would like to purchase and add to my collection.
They are after all, above the law.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I started listening to music by pirating. Napster/Kazaa era. Everything on the radio I found to be absolute shit. Piracy allowed me to explore more obscure music, most of which I was unable to buy where I lived anyways. I still pirate a ton of music, and often do not buy a lot of the albums I listen too, instead I spend my disposable income on instruments to create new music and old vinyls from local stores. When I do buy an album, it tends to be rather small time startup bands I like that I see in bar-scale shows, mostly because they need gas money and the albums are much more reasonably priced. I pay the cover charge, drink loads of liquor which in turn makes these shows profitable therefore possible.
So yes, most of the bands/record labels I listen too lose out (and most of said artists are dead anyways so it doesn't much matter), but my money just lands somewhere else to someone more needing. I'm proud of the fact that 40 year old bald white people armed with a focus group, song writers and a C Major scale arent getting their greasy fingers on my hard earneds. These are the people killing music with their pollutants, making money of the creativity of others both alive and dead.
Put your money where it counts, in the hands of true artists not con artists.
I'm so hipster, I shit piss!
...horse diarrhea?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Can we please stop calling people who engage in copyright infringement pirates?
Real pirates are scum who need to be wiped off the planet.
Copyright infringers are breaking one or more laws in certain jurisdictions, and their moral status is more of a gray area.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The content industry after decades is still in a childish state. Take Nintendo and Sony, both of them just reversed their region encoding. The 3DS uses region blocking, the new PSP won't. WTF! Surely by now you expect a standard approach to have been proven the most viable and to be used? But no, content companies keep flip-flopping around on whether a piece of content should simply be available at the same time around the globe or not.
Yakuza is a good game series from Japan, you might compare it to GTA but instead of the distopian world where you are on a race to the bottom meeting every low life on the way, you take care of orphans and beat the crap out of criminals to get them back on the correct path. The Yakuza title is of course a western mis-nomer since you are an EX-yakuza member. So, the fans of it imported the game on imported consoles to such an extent that Sega decided to release it in the west. With cut content, because it would have taken to long to "translate"... talk about adding insult to injury, many fans bought BOTH copies just to show their support and then get told that large parts are apparently not worth it for Sega to spend money on translating despite charging the same full price for the result.
It is not the cut content itself that makes my bile rise, it is the amateurish approach to game development that does not simply see an English translation as a standard part of development in Japan. Do it from the start and it costs peanuts since you won't have to listen to every word spoken but can do it right from the script and the translation is build right into the game itself from the get go.
Mind you, I suppose I shouldn't be suprised. If you see some of the kludges that are pulled to make normal cars suitable for driving in leftish places like England you just got to accept a lot of creators can't think two steps ahead.
It is a global world, if I hear on say slashdot about a new piece of content and I can't buy it... I will download it. I downloaded episodes of Enterprise before they had even aired in the US and long before they were ever aired in the EU... so okay, they sucked but still, if you want to SELL me something, you got to make it available to me.
If the content industry was the refreshment industry they would build their stand on a remote industrial area, lock the door and then complain people take their own refreshment to events.
Many a MMO game in the past had no local payment options for the EU and other non-credit card carrying parts of the world. iTunes? You have to use the dismall clickandbuy rather then Apple using a proper payment gateway. Fine, if you make it so hard for me to spend, I just won't. And if you think I am a thightwad, I spend about a 1000 euro each month of frivilous stuff, not even candy and over-priced coffee that falls under essentials, but really stuff like gaming keyboards, dolls oops figurines etc. But I am not going to beg you to allow me to pay you and I am also not going to wait a year till you maybe want to sell me something if you are in the mood.
Maybe they should fire the hipsters and hire some market (as in street market) sale people, oh wait, they open after work hours start and close WAY before making it impossible for single working people to visit them and are completly baffled why this is... lets face it. Humans are just stupid.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Back in the Napster (pirate one of course) days, I bought FAR more CDs than I had before or have since.. It was simply that we could share openly without fear, try lots of new music out and if I liked it I bought it and often bought other CDs from that band..
Since they took down napster and started going after users I stopped pirating and also now buy very little music (sometimes I do buy CDs but nothing like I did).
Ohh and I no longer listen listen to Metalica, I put your albums in the bin where they belong Lars you greedy pig... LOL...
... for example, by protecting the wearer from blows that would otherwise harm them?
I don't understand this from the labels' perspective... if they find that "piracy" actually helps their sales, then why do they insist on paying huge amounts to fight it?
I suppose I can see two options:
1. Political momentum / Saving face. "We've sunk so much into this for so long, that we'd look stupid and open ourselves up to counter claims if we admitted that we've been wrong all this time."
2. There are different types of distribution. For example: BitTorrent is not the same thing as selling $2 copies in Asian market stalls. (Though, from the customer's point of view I don't see the difference.)
So would it not benefit labels to trim down their anti-piracy war to save on costs, allow the profitable piracy types to prosper and focus more intently on the damaging types of piracy (if there are any)?
Riddle me this:-
They've just released season 10 of Jag, and we're now halfway through, and the other half was reading about some of the other work the Jag actors have done. She soon finds 'the good witch' series with C. Bell in the lead role.
A short while later, she has found that she quite likes this series - and would like to own the DVD. After a bit of hunting she found that you could get this series on DVD - but only as region 1 and then with limited means to buy it (region "4" here out of interest). After a brief discussion about this problem, and some related issues, she finds the show on youtube and watches it - 8 minutes at a time ... on her phone *sigh*
Now she has found where she can buy this online.. which is great.. but I can assure you that the legal owner of this content has nothing to do with the sale..
So.
Here comes the question.
How exactly does this help the industry?
Here is the perfect scenario - we've just purchased one series - Jag Season 10 - on DVD, and to forestall the inevitable "there's nothing on TV.. what are we watching tonight?" we have a new candidate.. which isn't available in Aus legally.
I am really failing to understand how regional locking and limited release of product is helping the industry who are crying foul over "pirates" and threatening to sue anyone who doesn't play by their rules.
Meanwhile, I am hoping that my other half doesn't get a serious crick in her neck from constant youtubing in the bath (amazing how a zip lock bag helps.. best of both worlds really :) )
Anyone care to weigh in?
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In related news, strong evidence shows that drunkards spend a good bit of money on alcohol, even when many free drinks are made available to them. Meanwhile, the average person's access to a few free drinks seems not to push nor dissuade them from the purchase of a glass of wine from time to time.
It's all infonography, and it flows into a pit that cannot be filled. Meanwhile, most normal people have some sort of life (or are at least obsessed with something else) and wouldn't bother pirated.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I think everyone here is missing the absolutely amazing fact that this report points out. It isn't that "piracy" doesn't hurt the entertainment companies. It is the absolutely amazing fact that "piracy" is in fact a profit center for the entertainment companies. "Piracy" actually makes the entertainment companies more money. It seems very counter intuitive, but then many things about buying habits and marketing are counter intuitive.
Most people here have not applied any logic to see the underlying issue presented. If "piracy" was only about cost and nothing else then "pirates" would buy far fewer titles than average consumers because they would get everything for free. If they get everything for free and can save it to a DVD or CD why in the world would they ever buy anything? The reality is because it has very little to do with price. Logically "pirates" have to be completely stupid if they are buying anything when they can get it for nothing. So you have to ask why the logic is off. Why are they buying if they can get it for nothing and the quality is exactly the same? Why exactly would they pay when the risk for getting an exact copy is so very low to pretty much non-existant? The reason clearly must be that cost is not the issue and that there is some underlying reason that causes them to spend money when there is absolutely no need or logical reason for them to spend any money at all. This is the **HUGE** point that most have missed entirely about this report. People who have absolutely enormous amounts of exact copies of media available to them at no expense are still spending more than average consumers. That is a giant red flag against piracy. If they even spend the same amount as average consumers that would still be a giant red flag. There is more going on here and this proves that "piracy" absolutely does not cost the entertainment industry anything, in fact it is a profit center for them.
That is correct you read that correctly. This report absolutely logically proves that "piracy" is a profit center for the entertainment industry. There is absolutely no logical way to argue otherwise. If "piracy" causes more money to be spend by those doing "piracy" then it absolutely must be a profit center given that it is causing increases in sales. To argue otherwise is logically inconstant and it is lying. Entertainment companies have known this since the days of LP records. It is absolutely not something they want the general public or law makers to know because it would completely ruin their campaign to demonize "piracy' in order to get what they want for other reasons. There is a reason there have been very few convictions for individual "piracy". It's because they know it isn't a problem, and that they only have to do a very very few select legal cases to point at to get law makers to give them what they want. They want more control over the distribution channels that they know they are loosing now and probably will loose even more in the future. So they are trying to con law makers in to passing laws that are really designed to give them more legal control over distribution channels especially for the future. The entertainment companies are scared to death that they are the whip and buggy makers of this generation and that the market is going to leave them in the dust. The reality is that is exactly what is going on and the market is trying to leave them in the dust because they add no value to the product and only increase costs as a middle man. The current markets and the Internet in general are all about removing as many middle men as possible to reduce costs and this includes entertainment companies, rather than the artists themselves.
Entertainment companies are about to be completely screwed in a few short years. You can already setup a full music studio in your basement with $2000 or less and product the exact same level of product as the big studios. That freaks out the record companies and producers big time. High end professional digital movie cameras are getting better and better ev
Well, life on a pirate ship can be pretty stale, so they need a lot of DVD's.
Also pirates have peg legs and parrots on their shoulders.
Maybe we should come up with a new term to replace pirate, how about "Copyright Violator" ?
Do not copy their stuff because it melts your and your friends brains and do not buy from these creeps. They will use every last dime of anything you give them to screw you. And much worse than they screw the artists every day.
Just say no. Have nothing to do with this slime. You can do it.
Having bread to eat might be a basic human right, access to the latest Lady Gaga CD is not. All this human rights nonsense with regards to downloading media stinks of of fat white, middle class wannabe revolutionaries who have never lived, seen or read about a real police state except for raising their blood pressure over their downloaded version of V-For-Vendetta.
It's not that pirating is directly a cause (or effect) of buying media: they're both simply highly correlated with "consumption" of media.
You cannot cleanly separate the people into "payers" and "pirates". You can cleanly separate the people into "low consumers" and "high consumers" (of media).
People who consume a lot of media will tend to buy more and pirate more than a person who doesn't. Any person who has passed by both stages along their lives knows that this is true: you tend to pirate more when you buy more and vice-versa; when you don't have time or willingness to consume media, you probably won't spend any significant money on it (or time, pirating it).
If I could just pay a fee for one week pass to stream episodes of Archer, I'd pay in an instant. If there was ANY legal way for me to watch Game Of Thrones, new episodes of Southpark, The Daily Show, How I Met Your Mother... I'd pay a lot, just to be able to stream them legally. Alas, there is none. The shows aren't on here in Finland, the official sites that stream them (such as those from comedy central) block finnish users... New episodes can't be bought on DVD even from abroad and there is no point watching a show two years after everyone else has stopped talking about it.
Give me some fair deal, such as being able to pay 50 euros (=70 dollars) a month to be able to stream the handful of shows that I watch and I'll sign up immediatelly. (I already pay Spotify for most of my music streaming) Until that point, please don't sue me for piracy.
Piracy does not cause increased consumption, i.e., the article (and presumably also the study) doesn't say: "Pirating is good for the media industry". It just says that media-enthusiasts are also more frequently engaged in piracy. The media industry could still come to the simple conclusion: Increase obstacles to pirating to increase sales. Enthusiastic customer-pirates already spend a good deal on media but they would spend even more without piracy. A follow-up study should probably estimate how media consumption decreases with increased piracy hurdles.
We don't know if the study is a good one. It may be biased, for example, because only pirates who purchase the stuff after they have pirated have been willing to participate in the study.
Personally, I believe this study is bullshit, because, judging from my peers, no one ever buys anything.
I ended up hooked and now have the entire Joss Whedon collection, Angel, Buffy and Firefly with a couple of BtVS collectibles my late sister got me for bookends.
You should check out Dollhouse - pretty cool, once it gets going. Plus, you need it to merit the "entire" Joss Whedon collection claim :-)
Unless these customers are hoisting the jolly roger before engaging in ship to ship armed robbery, they are NOT pirates.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
From TFS: "The study states that it is much more typical for a pirate to download an illegal copy of a movie to try it before purchasing"
Sorry, I just don't believe it. I'm sure that's what people say when they're asked but I just can't see why you'd bother buying a film you already had an illegal copy of.
If it was on your conscience that much, you wouldn't have downloaded it in the first place, no one forced you to.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So that they can record the movie & torrent it?
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Everyone commenting on this post will be tracked and sued by the RIAA/MPAA. Thank you for revealing your illegal activities :)
Actually, I've know this for ages. My friends who download music, movies, shows, tend to go out and buy the box sets/cds/dvds/blurays, etc. It's common sense.
We like to group people into particular groups do our stats on that particular grouping and declare the Dewey Defeats Truman.
There are different types of pirates and they are not equal.
You got moocher pirates who just take what they can get and don't post back.
You got the pirates who buy and then redistribute.
You got the pirates who mooch and redistribute what they mooch
You got the pirates who buy and then redistribute for a price.
You got the pirates who mooch and then redistribute for a price.
Now if you pick and choose which Pirate group then you can prove whatever you want.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I know many people might find it hard to buy an mp3 player without music, a new stereo without music, or a fancy car stereo. Having songs at the start allows them the resources to justify more players, preparing them to buy more songs. Pirating allows you to have a nice selection to use on all these devices, which allow you to consume much more media.
Once you have a love of music and all the nice gadgets, it's easy to buy a new song or consume more media.
There have been other studies which show that file sharing is a clear market indicator of how well a song/CD/Movie will do in the real marketplace. Seeing as how the industry PAYS millions of dollars for market research (one aspect of which is to monitor these illegal transfers), the *AA are also BENEFITING from the very activity they are trying to stop.
Why do you think there are so many leaked singles for upcoming CDs? They use this information to figure how many CDs to press and which countries and states to target. Making 1M CDs when it may only sell 200K just resulted in a loss of 800K times the material and manufacturing costs (shiipping too if not kept back at warehouse. This activity actually allows the companies to be much more efficient and thereby reduce overall costs.
I don't think they really want the file sharing to stop but just keep it at a low enough level that it doesn't dent actual sales.
Between the higher than average sales to sharers and the free market research/feedback, I think they can stand to share a little more.
People that consume certain media have more odds to buy it than people that is not interested in it. If you saw, even pirated, all Harry Potter series, and liked it, probably would bought a ticket last weekend. But if you don't care about it, pirated or not, you won't be a potential future customer. That applies not just for movie sequels, but for directors, actors, genres and whole media categories.
If this is true, the shareholders of the various companies that are publicly traded have a strong case for suing the board of directors for not performing their legal requirement to increase profits.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I agree with these notes and I would add: The conclusion of the report seems to fail on simple logic.
If people who pirate are more likely to buy, then we would expect to see much higher content sales today than 10 years ago, since much more content is pirated today than it was 10 years ago.
But as you point out, what we actually see are *lower* content sales in most digital creative industries. The conclusion from this simple correlation is that at best piracy does not help sales very much (if we stipulate some other unknown factor that depressed sales), and at worst it harms sales.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Definition of "consume": to destroy or expend by use; use up.
When you watch a DVD, or listen to an MP3, you are not destroying it. You are not consuming its value. You can listen to it again, you can play it for friends, and in another 75-125 years it might even enter the public domain and you can mass produce it.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Bill Gates became the Richest man in the world While complaining that 50% of his Software was Pirated. All is not what it seems sometimes.
Those bits of media I am tempted to pirate I would never pay for anyway, so I would gain something by pirating it but the media companies certainly wouldn't lose anything.
Or perhaps a better statement would be to say that I already pay for it, but in a different form. Fair Use says I can record anything broadcast to me in my home and replay it for myself as often as I like ("time-shifting"). Well, rather than setting up the schedule and my equipment to do that each time, it's easier to download it off the Internet. Same content; same use; different channel of procurement.
So yeah, I'm paying for it. But if I were to obtain it through a method that strikes fear into the hearts of the media companies because it COULD be abused, I would be Evil and should be locked away for a long time and pay them lots of money. Makes sense.
One way to use Internet downloads is as another form of time-shifting. According to Fair Use you could have legally recorded anything that was broadcast into your home across the air waves or cable and replayed it for yourself as many times as you wanted. If instead you obtain the same recording from an online source, what exactly is the difference? Same content; same use; slightly different method of time-shifting. The same thing logically applies to music that has been broadcast to your home.
The same may not apply to software or to movies that have not yet been released, but there are always ways to illegally exploit mechanisms that are otherwise fair and legal and liberating. Hint: there are also ways to exploit mechanisms such as copyright laws that CAN be fair and legal and liberating because they keep people who have developed good content from getting screwed.